The Dandy Warhols

The Dandy Warhols' fourth album sees their detached pop drift further out into the abyss. With production help from Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, the group digs in and delivers an abundance of robotic, neo-New Wave pop songs. Tracks like "I Am A Scientist" exemplify the group's enriching mixture of irony and sleaze.

With their fifth album Welcome to the Monkey House, Portland, Oregon's Dandy Warhols
head straight for the trash. The murky earth tones the group sported on previous releases
-- that Velvet Underground sturm and drang -- have been repainted, with Duran Duran's
Nick Rhodes's production adding the glittery, tacky facade of early-Eighties' new wave:
splashy drum beats, robotic synths, android vocals. "Insincere Because I" could... More >

MTV babies say this is the Dandys' early-'80s record, and who am I to demur? Someone who was too busy back then with X and juju and Grandmaster Flash to internalize whatever musical materials the band has purloined, and who would prefer said materials in this context even if I had. Better Nick Rhodes producing alt sellouts than Nick Rhodes claiming alt himself, and better alt sellouts embracing electropop detachment than alt sellouts aping rock and roll abandon. Clever and droll but also hypnotic and mysterious, with odd noises buried in the luscious mix and Zia McCabe's keyb bass as pleasurable as any explicit hook, they make their big statement in "Plan A," which goes "All of us sing about it" for quite a long while before positing first a planet and then a message that aren't there. (Grade - A-)